Next

Welcome to our genetic world.
Fast, furious, and out of control.
This is not the world of the future—it’s the world right now.

Is a loved one missing some body parts? Are blonds becoming extinct? Is everyone at your dinner table of the same species? Humans and chimpanzees differ in only four hundred genes; is that why a chimp fetus resembles a human being? And should that worry us? There’s a new genetic cure for drug addiction—is it worse than the disease?

We live in a time of momentous scientific leaps, a time when it’s possible to sell our eggs and sperm online for thousands of dollars and to test our spouses for genetic maladies. We live in a time when one-fifth of all our genes are owned by someone else—and an unsuspecting person and his family can be pursued cross-country because they happen to have certain valuable genes within their chromosomes….

In His Own Words

Part of what interested me was the classic issue of nature, nurture —how our understanding of our genetic material now that it’s all been decoded mostly and we really have a better understanding of how we interact with it, how it interacts with the environment. So what is the deal with nature, nurture? I mean it’s been a debate for my whole lifetime and it turns out to be enormously complicated and really interesting and I start to envision the Genome as a kind of cloud that is interactive with the environment and it’s really interesting.

That’s just my idea. No one else holds it. And part of that leads me to think I want to do the book to be in a way analogous to the Genome. The genome accumulates bits and pieces of genetic material over time. They get viruses. They get incorporated and so I start incorporating a fair number of things that are just true stories that I stick in the book.

From the Official Archives

Origins

In 2005, Michael Crichton returned to the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, where he had done postdoctoral work, to attend a conference on Genetics and Law sponsored by the Jefferson Institute. He was surprised and outraged by what he learned about the current laws regarding a range of issues in genetics. He immediately put aside what he had been working on, and began research for the book that became Next. He modeled the structure after the genome itself incorporating fragments of popular culture, wrote a series of stories that sometimes interconnected, and sometimes didn’t. The result was a very atypical novel.

The Salk Institute

Reactions

Reviewer response was positive. Publisher’s Weekly called it

“an ambitious effort to show what’s wrong with the U.S.’s current handling of gene patents and with the laws governing human tissues…few can match Crichton in crafting page-turners with intellectual substance.”

NPR liked the

“fascinating dramatic situations that hold a reader’s attention down to the last page.”

The Wall Street Journal referred to

“his uncanny prescience in choosing subjects where fact will soon catch up with his fiction…He makes five eminently sensible policy suggestions…they might chafe some biotech companies, but they are essentially pro-market and pro-research.”

Next is a #1 BestsellerPublisher’s Weekly, December 11, 2006

Policy

In 2007, a conference was held on “Legal and Ethical Issues in Michael Crichton’s Next“ at the Chicago-Kent College of Law. The participants examined the legal status of and disputes over the human body, and discussed potential policy, legislative or other legal solutions. The discussion touched upon the commercialization of academic science, conflicts in biomedical research, and gene patents.

In early 2007, Xavier Becerra (D-Calif) and Dave Weldon (R-Fla) introduced legislation to ban gene patents—HR. 977, the Genomic Research and Accessibility Act.

As in several previous books, Michael Crichton put his own personal conclusions at the end of the book, in a separate section.You can read that section here: Author’s Note from NEXT

Who Owns Your Body website

In 2006 Michael Crichton called for the end of gene patents in this Author’s Note which appeared in Next. In June 2013 the United States Supreme Court ruled that human genes may not be patented.

Viral Marketing Campaign for Next

Fact vs. Fiction

Many reviewers and some journalists have been unclear about what parts of Next are fact, and what is fiction. The usual response has been to assume that the most outrageous elements in the narrative are fiction, yet many are not. Here is a list of what is real:

Taking cells by eminent domain. Although some attorneys have found this idea far-fetched, in fact lawyers for UCLA threatened to do exactly that in the famous case of John Moore (1980.)

Humans and Chimps Interbred Until Recently. Research reported accurately in the novel.

Stem Cell Debate Rages. A straightforward summary of the state of research, and the scandal involving Korean researcher Hwang.

Human chimeras. More than fifty have been discovered in the last decade, initially as a result of a paternity dispute.

Theft of cadaver bones and body parts. Thefts described in the book have been reported around the world.

Blondes becoming extinct. A fabricated story reported by the BBC, debunked by the Washington Post and more thoroughly by the excellent site snopes.com. Eventually the World Health Organization felt compelled to issue a press release. That didn’t prevent the Times of London from repeating the story a couple of years later. (Best debunking headline: “Blondes Extinction Report Is Pigment of Imagination,” from the Times of India.)

Cytokine storms. A well-known cause of death from gene replacement therapy.

Scientists Grow Miniature Ear In Lab. As reported by MIT.

Submarine patents. As described.

Sociability gene. Identification of several such behavioral genes has been claimed, invariably with fanfare. However (as the novel says) nobody has ever proven that a single gene causes a single human behavioral trait.

Transgenic cactus. Created by artist Laura Cinti, as described. A subject of ongoing controversy.

Glowing transgenic rabbit. Created by Eduardo Kac, as described. The French lab that made the rabbit would not turn it over to Kac, however.

Pig wings. Created as described.

Transgenic zeba fish. Created and marketed as described.

Talking transgenic parrot. There is at least one gray parrot with a claimed vocabulary of more than 950 words, but it is not transgenic.

Genes for gayness, violence, sleep, alcoholism. All have been reported, none have been subsequently verified.

Neanderthals were first blondes. Reported by Times of London.

Canavan gene litigation ends. Reported accurately.

Professors and academics are “strikingly immature.” Report of work of Dr. Bruce Charlton. Quotes are accurate.